Review - Darkstalkers Resurrection brings the sore-thumb fun

It had taken a couple of hours to get there in the single player campaign and my RSI was starting to flare up. Fighting games are certainly not my forté, but what a nostalgic feeling.

For a few years now, Capcom has been doing everything it can to make its classic arcade fighting games available for download online, but Darkstalkers was always absent. In 2005, Capcom released a collection of the games, but it was a Japan-only release.

Having sore thumbs – once again – is a sign of a good game, and Darkstalkers Resurrection is no exception.

Darkstalkers Resurrection, developed by Iron Galaxy Studios and produced by Capcom, breathes life into Night Warriors: Darkstalkers Revenge and Darkstalkers 3 with online multiplayer, a “vault” full of concept artwork and videos, and the ability to record your victories/fails to share online.

It’s a neat package of the two games that offers a lot for a modest asking price of $14.99.

Darkstalkers, known as Vampire Savior in Japan, has always been a fighting game on the cusp of popularity. Beautiful, complex and macabre in its aesthetic, it’s a game franchise that seemed to have been forgotten without a good HD release until now.

Since its original release in 1994, little bits of its genius have been borrowed by other franchises and games. Morrigan — one of the game’s most well-known fighters — has appeared in other Capcom titles including Marvel Vs. Capcom 3.

The game’s core mechanics are unchanged. Combos — both on the ground and in the air — reversals and throws all act as they should in the game’s player versus player and single player campaigns.

Darkstalkers is no place for button mashers — like a certain video game reviewer with sore thumbs. However, the game offers a number of ways for players to improve their skills.

The challenge mode feature helps players develop their skills with each character. Using a variety of combination challenges, it allows you to practice combos, advanced blocking, and advanced fighting techniques. For the uninitiated it’s a great way to build your skills; however, unlike the game’s training mode there is no button scroll available in this mode. It can make the lightning-quick moves of the computer seem nigh impossible to replicate, but that’s what the mode is for: practice, practice, practice.

What this practice translates into is confidence enough to venture into the online multiplayer mode of the game. On the whole, gameplay is smooth and responsive. On a few occasions, I was unable to connect with any other players. When I did, ultimately losing a number of matches, Darkstalkers worked as well as any other online fighting game.

On a large television, Darkstalker Resurrection‘s characters look a little fuzzy. Considering how the original character sprites looked, Iron Galaxy Studios seems to have replicated them as best they can for HD televisions. When scaled up, sprites — like the characters in the game — lose definition as we might see on smaller screens. When blown up, sprites will often have less detail due to the pixels bleeding into one another through an anti-aliasing process. This makes the jagged edges of the sprites look softer, but on a larger scale it makes characters look fuzzy.

The game compensates for this by offering a few clever ways to give Darkstalkers Resurrection that arcade-perfect look. In the options menu, you can set the game to have an arcade cabinet look, a full-screen mode, and a stretched mode to accommodate most television sets. The game also gives players the options to add scan lines as you might see them on old cathode ray tube television screens.

The game also has a “Vault” feature that allows you to use “VP” points to unlock concept artwork, game introductions, and various other goodies within the game. And for gamers tired of being schooled by the computer in the single-player campaign, the vault also has each character’s endgame video available to be unlocked.

Darkstalkers Resurrection is a faithful replication of the old arcade series. Iron Galaxy Studios — known for developing online HD releases of arcade games — did their best to ensure the game’s aesthetic carried over to a larger screen.